


On the Corner of Irrationality and Insight

by objectsinmotion



Category: Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-06
Updated: 2011-07-06
Packaged: 2017-10-21 04:32:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectsinmotion/pseuds/objectsinmotion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it takes somebody outside the problem to see the solution.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Corner of Irrationality and Insight

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by rukbat3

  
**  
On the Corner of Irrationality and Insight   
**   


It had all begun rather smoothly – he should have known then that it would all fall apart as quickly as possible. Lars stared at the hole in the air and gulped a couple of times. _Uh oh._

***

“Kit!” Carmela’s voice could reach the stratosphere when she wanted it to, and apparently now she wanted to. “Oh, Kiiit!” Marina Rodriguez looked up from the dishes she was putting away.

“Carmela,” she called into the living room, and a contrite silence fell.

“Sorry, Mama,” her daughter said. Marina returned her attention to the plates, and then stopped.

“Is Kit even home?” she said. The last time she’d seen him, Kit had been running out the front door, flipping through pages in his Manual.

“Uh…” Now Carmela sounded a bit sheepish. “I guess not, Mama. I’m going over to the Crossings, then, if that’s all right?”

“Be home in time for dinner,” Marina warned, and heard Carmela’s acknowledgment as she rushed upstairs.

It was a rare day off for her, and Marina paused at the foot of the stairs. Normally, she took her days off as a challenge, trying to get as much done as possible. Today, however… she smiled a bit, and gathered up her mending basket and headed outside. It was sunny and warm, and there was no reason to be inside.

Kit arrived home shortly before dinner, mud-covered and tired. She sent him straight upstairs for a shower. Twenty minutes later, he came back down the stairs, toweling off his hair, bare feet squeaking a bit on the wood floor. “What time is dinner, Mama?” he asked, rooting around in the fridge. He emerged with a lemon soda in his hand, and blinked innocently up at her when she lifted her eyebrows. She let it slide.

Carmela arrived in a rush as Kit helped his Papa get dinner on the table, full of bubbling apologies and stories of what she had been doing all day. Marina watched in concern as Kit ate slowly, pushing his food around his plate between bites. As Kit had begun growing taller, the amount of food he could eat in a sitting had also increased.

“And what have you been doing today, Kit?” she asked, as ‘Mela seemed to be winding down. Kit looked up, startled.

“Huh?” he said.

Marina repeated her question, and Kit lowered his spoon. “Nita and I were looking at a disturbance over near where Darryl lives,” he said. “Some sort of creatures were appearing, scaring people, and then disappearing. We spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out where they were coming from.”

***  
Lars flung himself onto the ground, dodging the flying mud. He muttered under his breath as he came back up. One _little_ mispronunciation, and he was stuck playing clean up all day. He didn’t want the world that he had discovered by accident to be destroyed. (It would be nice to go through and visit someday, to see its strange blue skies and green ground.) A giggle warned him in enough time to duck again, and he lifted his head to glare at the creature hiding behind the wall on this side of the fissure in the world-fabric. He wished that he’d gotten a message back from the other side of this mess; at least then he’d know that somebody was helping him out.

“Come on,” he said cajolingly. “Don’t you want to go back home? To not have to fight all day?”

Another face full of mud was his answer. He took a deep breath, and dove back into the fray.

***

The mid-day shift was busy the next day, and Marina came home, prepared to sit and crash. She wasn’t expecting to see Kit and Nita cuddled together on the couch, one Manual spread out across their laps.

“Hey, Mama,” Kit said.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Rodriguez,” Nita said.

“Kit, Nita,” she said. The armchair was calling her name, and she sat down with a grateful sigh. “Still working?”

“Yeah,” Kit said with a sigh. “Our intervention this afternoon didn’t exactly go as planned.”

“Oh?” Marina forced herself to relax. Realistically, she knew that what Kit and Nita did was dangerous, but they seemed to be fine, so she tried not to worry too much. At least not today.

“Unexpected resistance,” Nita said. “We found the hole that the creatures were coming through, but it didn’t want to close.” Nita shrugged. “It unbalances the world to have them on this side of the portal, and apparently there’s a default that keeps us from closing the hole while they’re on this side of it.” The girl sighed a bit. “And then the creatures were determined to fight us.” She grinned a bit, despite the seriousness of the situation. “If I didn’t know better, I’d’ve said that they were Nac Mac Feegle. But we think they were trying to prevent us from getting close to the hole, and we couldn’t get any of them to calm down long enough for us to explain what we were trying to do.”

“What kind of creatures are they?” Marina asked. Kit’s description of scary creatures the day before had pulled up images of slimy figures, with lots of teeth, but maybe they weren’t so bad.

“All sorts.” Kit shifted a bit, catching the Manual as it started to slip. “Well, here.” He twisted the book around so that Marina could see the illustrations of the creatures. Marina looked at the book and was startled to see the writing shift a bit so that she could read it.

“What would they do if there was nothing here for them to fight?” Marina asked, remembering the squabbles that had come up in years past. When Carmela and Helena had fought as children, separating the two of them completely had been the only thing she had found that worked. A stillness fell over the two wizards on the sofa.

“What?” Kit asked.

“Set up a… a force-field that keeps them from getting out and maybe prevents people from getting in,” Marina suggested. “Assuming that they can get back on their own, once they get bored, they’ll go back.”

“That… could work,” Nita said slowly.

“Can they get back through without help, though?” Kit said, digging through his Manual.

“Well, we can help with that, once they stop trying to fight so hard,” Nita said.

“Wish I knew how they’d gotten through in the first place, though," Kit said. “I’d really rather not be doing this again in six months, or a year.”

Nita opened her mouth to say something, and then Manual flashed under their hands. Kit blinked, and then flipped it around to see the message.

“Seriously?” Nita said, dropping her head back and groaning a bit. “All of this trouble, because of a careless mistake?”

“You’d rather it be on purpose?” Kit said dryly. “Come on, we have a wizard to assist.” He and Nita shared a glance that said that they were talking mentally, and then both were hurrying out of the house with a shouted goodbye. Marina closed her eyes and smiled.


End file.
